


A Beginner's Guide To Growing

by lasergirl



Category: Doom Patrol (TV)
Genre: Healing, Orchids, Personal Growth, metaphors galore
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-20
Updated: 2019-05-20
Packaged: 2020-03-08 07:34:15
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 911
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18890068
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lasergirl/pseuds/lasergirl
Summary: Larry grows orchids and, inadvertently, heals parts of himself.





	A Beginner's Guide To Growing

**I. Needs**

Larry sets the orchid on the windowsill in his bedroom. Rita had brought it to him one morning, claiming that “It would liven up that dreary room,” as if he had any choice about the overlapping lead panels riveted into the walls. He’d taken it, mostly to placate her because she had a look on her face that he’d come to understand meant she wouldn’t take ‘no’ for an answer.

He knows pretty much nothing about plants. It hadn’t really been on his radar – and that was literally true – advanced mathematics and physics, engineering and mechanics, flight school and astronaut training was what he’d bled and sweat over for decades. He guessed it needed water and sunlight. That was pretty easy.

It shrivelled and died in 24 hours.

**II. Medium**

He didn’t dare tell Rita that he’d managed to irradiate her gift to death while he slept unbandaged. Instead, he acquired two nearly identical ones, stashed one in his bathroom and made a careful show of taking one downstairs to show her how well it was blossoming.

“It’s doing so well, Larry!” She praised him. “Look how much those roots have grown.”

So, he learned how to re-pot orchids in a special bark mixture ordered from the local hardware store. Somehow, he broke all the roots trying to de-tangle them and the plant suffered for a few more weeks before finally dropping all its leaves in a sad pile.

**III. Propagation**

He made a show of placing the duplicate surviving orchid in the middle of the dining room table that he doesn’t eat at. But Rita does, and she praises him every day on how well his plant is doing.

In the meantime, Larry had procured a dozen more plants and a radiation dosimeter and was in the process of conducting his own bathroom experiments. He already had a set of infrared lamps installed in the ceiling, a suggestion from Caulder to help manage his damaged body temperature, and he augmented those with a few ultraviolet grow lights for the orchids.

Phalaenopsis orchids, Larry discovered, actually loved the radiation he emitted but only for a set period of time. An hour a day with his body unbandaged was nearing their limit, but that was the amount of time it usually took for him to bathe and re-bandage himself. He rotated the dining room orchid with one of the twelve so it appeared to bloom perpetually.

**IV. Growth**

In the handbook he read, Larry learned that he could cross-pollinate two plants fairly easily, and he ended up with so many seed pods he felt guilty not letting the seeds inside have a chance to become something. His bathroom becomes overcrowded with mature plants and new, fragile babies, all flourishing in the light, heat and extraterrestrial radiation of his once-sterile bathroom.

There are orchids on every windowsill of the house, and even some in the room that Niles let the big copper-coloured robot call his own. Larry isn’t sure that it’s even functioning when he slips in to swap the plants, but if it is, the robot never says anything to him.

Through the bandages and the gardening gloves, Larry’s fingers aren’t exactly nimble, but they are gentle enough to repot even the most tender roots safely. 

**V. Expansion**

“You’re going to do what?”

Larry shrugged at Rita’s piercing question. “Well, nobody’s really using the bus, and I can open and close the windows to control the heat and humidity, so it’s kind of perfect as a greenhouse.”

The seats unbolted fairly easily and he stacked them in the disused garage next to Niles Caulder’s plain white unmarked panel van. Then Larry put in a few potting benches and populated the bus with orchids. 

Rita comes to watch him work while he gently moves the pots of flowers around, ensuring that the newest inhabitants are getting what they need to grow strong and healthy. She has a sort of self-satisfied smirk at the corner of her mouth that hints something to Larry.

“What’s so funny?”

“It’s just nice to see you out and about,” she says enigmatically. “It looks good on you.”

**+1 Change**

Jane tears it all out in an hour. It pains him when they return from Paraguay and he discovers the potting benches all broken and crowded into the garage. His plants are missing, and he fears they are all dead. He sinks to his knees and doesn’t know how long he stays there.

“Larry?” It’s Rita at his shoulder and she’s holding a tiny blooming hybrid, one Larry recognizes as his own particular crossbreed he raised from seed. She hands it to him. “Follow me.”

They cross the driveway and the side lawn, and duck around the hedges and then Jane’s there, just Jane and nobody else, and behind her, there’s a wall of glittering glass.

“I felt so bad about tearing up your bus we got some guys to put this together,” she tells him and waves her arm.

It’s not huge, barely larger than the floor space of the old short bus, but it’s a brand new greenhouse with a crunchy gravel floor and three rows of benches and all of Larry’s orchids are there, happily bobbing their flowers to welcome him in.

And neither Rita nor Jane can see it, but underneath the bandages, his hands are shaking and he’s crying, but it’s happy tears because for once in his life something survived.

END.

**Author's Note:**

> I love Larry Trainor and fortunately, I already wrote about orchids in one of my other fandoms so it was a good fit.


End file.
